


curtain call

by plumesvertes



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Abstract, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Dream Sequence, Other, literally one thousand words of being emo about Kirei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25045663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumesvertes/pseuds/plumesvertes
Summary: Kiritsugu had his self-revelatory sequence in the Grail, so why wouldn’t Kirei have a similar experience?The Holy Grail gives a dying Kirei several visions that make him confront what he wants.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	curtain call

**Author's Note:**

> I am thinking about Kirei all of the time, so I wrote about Kirei thinking about Kirei.

Kirei was drowning.

His heart had stopped, but how could that be? He never had a heart. His mind was empty, his body empty, nothing there except his shattered ribs.

Black slime poured around him, into him. Gunshots rang in his ears, but all Kirei heard was Kiritsugu’s laugh. No, that couldn’t be right. Kiritsugu couldn’t laugh. They were cut from the same cloth, and neither one of them was able to experience anything as human as laughter.

Kiritsugu was crying. Kirei was sure of it. The gunshots were his lament, the bullets his tears. He’d put his very essence into them, hadn’t he? Ground up his bones. It was too bad he’d wasted them on Kirei.

Grail mud was falling from the sky, and Kirei wasn’t choking anymore, but it was falling into his eyes. Everything was dark. A frail figure hovered over him. An angel with a halo - no, a human with white hair. The homunculus?

The figure offered him a hand. Kirei tried to manifest the black keys, but that didn’t work, did it. Did it?

“What is your wish?”

Kirei didn’t know. 

He’d wanted to kill Kiritsugu, but really, he’d wanted to kill the part of himself he had seen in the other man. But Kiritsugu had flipped the script and killed him instead. Kirei was happy for him. From the bottom of his wretched, bullet-riddled heart, Kirei was happy for him. This was happiness overflowing from his heart, crimson and sticky, and Kirei was drowning in it.

Had he truly wanted to die? Or had he merely wanted a chance at life? At the very least, Kirei had wanted someone to understand him. Claudia had understood him, and that was what killed her. The knowledge of the true depravity of Kirei Kotomine had rotted her inside and out until it killed her. 

Two hands grabbed Kirei’s suddenly and pulled him up. It was dark, so dark, but there was that shock of white again. Kariya, slumped against the wall. The chittering of crest worms. 

Kirei picked up Kariya’s body and threw him into the worm pit. It was a fitting end to a miserable tale, and Kirei smiled.

Kirei picked up Kariya’s body and held him close as he cried.

Kirei picked up Kariya’s body and carried him up the stairs. Sakura was waiting for them. Kariya woke with her at his side, and the two of them wept with joy as they embraced. 

It was still so dark, Kirei couldn’t get the Grail mud out of his eyes, and Kariya looked just like her. That same halo of white hair. That same singular eye shining with joy that not even Kirei’s presence could stamp out. 

Kariya looked back at Kirei, and for a single shining second, that pure joy was directed at him. Sakura’s ability to trust had been shattered forever, but she dared to give Kirei a hopeful smile.

Kirei summoned the black keys and killed them both. 

Didn’t he?

Kirei was on the couch, and the room was filled with mud. Gilgamesh waded through it, but it sluiced off him, his skin wouldn’t stand to be tarnished by something so vile. He picked up a bottle of wine and two glasses that were floating in the muck.

Gilgamesh poured Kirei a glass. The liquid was pitch black. 

“What is your wish,” Gilgamesh asked, although it was more a demand than a question. “I can give you anything you desire,” he said, although that wasn’t true, was it.

“You said you would teach me how to experience joy,” said Kirei. An accusation, yet the words had no emotion behind them. Nothing Kirei said ever did.

“Was this Grail War not the most interesting segment of your tepid life? Can you honestly say that you would have experienced more joy if had I not interfered? You enjoyed killing Tokiomi. You enjoyed your fight with Kiritsugu. Don’t waste my time with lies that you didn’t.”

It was true. Gilgamesh had succeeded in sparking some semblance of joy in Kirei. It was only a spark, but it was more than Kirei had felt in years, maybe in his whole life. Only through Gilgamesh was Kirei able to live his truth. He was an evil man who could only find pleasure in killing and suffering. 

His answer should be simple, then. Kirei wanted violence, destruction, death by his own hands. So why wasn’t he satisfied? 

Kirei’s command seals glowed with mana. He gave the suicide order. 

Gilgamesh died with betrayal in his eyes. Hurt, even, but that couldn’t be right, because would Gilgamesh care? Why would he expect anything else of Kirei? He’d killed Tokiomi, he’d killed countless people, so why was Gilgamesh any different? Because he’d tried, even if it was only for his own amusement, to help Kirei?

This was what happened to people who tried to care about him. They always died. Kirei had wanted to kill them, but maybe that was because they were all marked for death anyway. 

The Grail mud was gone from Kirei’s eyes. His tears had washed it away. When had he started crying? 

The room was gone. Two hands were clasping his. Kirei was unsteady on his feet as he stood up. 

“What is your wish?” asked Claudia. 

There was no response save for the pattering of muck against the ground. Claudia waited and held Kirei’s hands. The real Claudia’s grip was never this strong.

Kirei was a dead man. If he had ever wanted anything, it didn’t matter now.

”I wish I understood...why God made me this way,” Kirei finally answered.

Claudia’s touched his face, wiped away a tear. Her hand came away bloody. “I’ve tried to help you understand yourself,” she said, sounding so much like the real Claudia. “The rest is up to you.”

Kirei said nothing. He thought he might feel something like peace, standing there in the mud rain with his dead wife, but it was probably just echoes in the hollowness.


End file.
